This national traveling exhibition focuses on Abraham Lincoln’s struggle to meet the constitutional challenges of the Civil War.

The exhibit vividly evokes Lincoln’s struggle to resolve the basic questions that divided Americans at the most perilous moment in the nation’s history: Was the United States truly one nation, or was it a confederacy of sovereign and separate states? How could a country founded on the belief that “all men are created equal” tolerate slavery? In a national crisis, would civil liberties be secure?

A variety of Civil War artifacts and local Bay Area stories add more substance to the exhibit.